Extreme pressing, relentless dribbling and deep runs: PSG-Bayern was a higher form of football

“We deserved to win,” said Paris Saint-Germain manager Luis Enrique after his side’s astonishing 5-4 victory against Bayern Munich. “But we also deserved a draw. And we would have even deserved to lose, because this game was that incredible.”

That statement was completely illogical yet also made perfect sense, and therefore proved a fitting appraisal of a truly logic-defying game in Paris on Tuesday.

This first leg of a Champions League semi-final was unquestionably the best match of the European season, probably the best of the decade so far and presumably the best many people watching it around the world have ever seen. Football is not generally a sport where you need to check the scoreboard to understand the state of play. Here, with so much going on, sometimes you needed to double-check: yes, it really was 3-2 at half-time, and 5-4 at full time, both in PSG’s favour.

This contest was crazy, but played according to what the two managers wanted: relentlessly end-to-end, high-tempo yet technically impressive, and played in a good spirit.

One largely irrelevant but telling incident was when Bayern won possession, and PSG right-back Achraf Hakimi took that as his cue to start moving up the pitch rather than retreating towards his own goal. His task was to aggressively press Bayern’s left-back Alphonso Davies.

To reiterate, this was a right-back sprinting 50 yards to close down a left-back; not staying goalside of the opposition winger, or focusing on helping his centre-backs, but ensuring the opposition couldn’t build up from the back freely. We’re accustomed to heavy pressing at this stage of the Champions League, but this was something else.

Accordingly, space opened up behind Hakimi: centre-back Marquinhos became a right-back and tracked Luis Diaz all over the place, at one point moving into a left-centre midfield position. As more gaps were plugged, others elsewhere opened up and the knock-on effect meant movement all over the pitch. It was the most open contest you will ever witness at the top level of football.

Tactics didn’t quite go out of the window, but positions largely did, partly because such a focus on man-marking in midfield means positions don’t really exist: your position is defined solely by your direct opponent, who is incentivised to move around excessively to drag you into uncomfortable situations.

In the opening stages, Ousmane Dembele was less a false nine and more a No 8 for PSG, almost forming a box midfield alongside Warren Zaire-Emery.

His opposite number, Bayern striker Harry Kane, regularly dropped even deeper than that. At one point, shortly before half-time, Kane appeared alongside his centre-backs and knocked a square pass out to Michael Olise. This was Bayern’s two best attacking players — you might argue European football’s two best attacking players this season — combining on the edge of their own box.

In isolation, of course, that could be construed as negative. The key detail was that their team-mates responded by sprinting into the gaps this created.

PSG’s midfielders, in particular, understood the drill and sprinted forward whenever they saw space opening up. Bayern’s runs came more often from their full-backs, often underlapping into the channels and hoping to be slipped in by a team-mate.

The other theme of this match was the number of players comfortable dribbling with the ball. This was the most distinctive aspect of PSG’s long-awaited Champions League success last season. “We live in a world of passing, but the common thing with PSG is they are all dribblers,” former Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger said of their 2025 success. Here, PSG came across fellow dribblers in Olise, Diaz and Jamal Musiala who could do the same.

Almost all the game’s key attacks came from players receiving when facing the opposition goal, or on the half-turn, and simply roaring forward. At times they beat opponents, taking them out of the game. On other occasions, they simply roared into space. Both are effective.

Take the game’s first two goals.

The opener was Kane from the spot, but the penalty was won after a move which featured Diaz collecting the ball on the edge of his own box, dribbling into space for fully 70 yards, before prompting a quick passing exchange and eventually being fouled as he was about to shoot.

Khvicha Kvaratskhelia’s equaliser was a different type of dribble. That was about trickery in a tight situation. and came when he collected the ball, faked to go inside Bayern right-back Josip Stanisic with a stepover, then stood the Croatian up before actually going inside him, creating just enough room to curl a shot home. Incidentally, that goal also came when Kvaratskhelia and Desire Doue, wingers on opposite flanks on paper, teamed up down the PSG left. That overload was possible because Hakimi was trusted to cover their entire right flank by himself.

Statistically, the surprising aspect of the match is that it “only” produced a 4.4 expected-goals number, and two penalties accounted for about 1.6 of that.

That tells us several things. The finishing was excellent. The goalkeepers didn’t actually make many saves during the rest of the game (and yet weren’t guilty of shocking errors either, which is probably unusual in a nine-goal thriller). The scoreline was, in a way, a bit of a freak event. But the scoring led to more scoring — both sides had periods when they were behind and needed to chase the game. “It was a crazy game and a lot happened,” said Kane. “There is a lot to digest.”

But do you have room for dessert, too?

“We’re not going to change our philosophy,” declared Dembele ahead of next Wednesday’s second leg in Munich. “We’re going to attack, and Bayern are going to attack.”

Luis Enrique had the final word, and spoke about the match like it wasn’t a victory for PSG, but for football.

“It was such an extraordinary game,” he said. “It is a moment to congratulate the players, the two sides, and all of those present here.”

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